“Wow.”
“Imagine that rose ceremony.”
“Oh my God.”
“Camille, will you accept this bad case of gas?”
“Stop!” We both erupt in giggles, and soon we’re laughing so hard, we can barely breathe.
“The wedding!” Wendy shrieks. “You’d throw rice. And cheese. And onions.”
“And that’s all fine, until the groom spends the whole honeymoon in the can!”
“I can’t believe you said that out loud.”
Tears are rolling down my face. My stomach hurts from laughing, and Wendy is making little squeaking noises. It’s very impressive to me how she’s able to drive so carefully and at the speed limit when she’s completely losing it. “Okay,” she says. “Okay, we have to . . . Oh my God.”
“Deep breaths.” I wipe a tear from my cheek, and Wendy and I breathe together, in and out. Once we’re calm, we sit in silence, collecting ourselves.
“This is one crazy-ass night.”
“Understatement of the year.”
We gaze out the window, this tiny town with its clapped-together houses, the one old-fashioned gas station, everything dark and abandoned-looking.
“There it is,” she says.
Within seconds we’ve reached the town square. She pulls up to the curb right next to it and stops the car, and without a word I step out into the night, my hoodie pulled past the sides of my face. Next to the flagpole is a squat little bookcase with a hand-painted sign at the top that says FREE LIBRARY. I shine my flashlight on it, and a noise erupts behind me—a muffled animal wail. Bear. I spin around to look, but the street is still. Quiet. The sound must have come from inside my mind, some primal fear making itself known. . . .
From behind the wheel of the Mercedes, Wendy gives me a tentative wave and only then do I realize I’ve been staring at her, frozen. I flash her a thumbs-up, turn back to the bookcase. Keep yourself together.
It’s just four shelves, all of them stocked with weathered tomes that are probably rejects from the real library. I find it quickly. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is on the top shelf, third from the left. I pull it out and flip through the pages until I find a sealed legal-sized envelope, which I bring back to the car.
Once I’m inside, I start to open the envelope, but Wendy puts her hand on mine. “Camille, before we do this next part, I should tell you something.” She says it very quietly.
“What?”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh.”
“It took me a little while, with your new hair and all. But when you were taking me out of the bar, everything snapped into place. The video. The trial. Your daughter.”
I exhale.
“For what it’s worth, I hate that Blanchard kid. I’ve always hated him. Never believed that bullshit story in Rolling Stone.”
“Thanks,” I tell her. I mean it.
“So, that being said . . .” Her voice trails off.
“You sound like you’re going to ask me to accept this rose.”
She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even smile. “I want to tell you about my son.”
“Oh, Wendy, you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t. But I want to. It’s only fair.”
I put the envelope down. Turn to her. “I would like to hear about him.”
She takes a breath. “Okay,” she says. “So first of all, our son Tyler was what we used to call a ‘change-of-life baby.’ I was told I couldn’t have children, but then surprise, surprise . . . I was forty-seven years old.”